William Wordsworth, \"Prelude\" the Prelude,

William Wordsworth, "Prelude"

The Prelude, or the Growth of a Poet's Mind

The Prelude details the development of the poet's mind by tracing the various stages of his relationship with nature:

The child loves nature for its charm on a sensuous level

The young boy loves nature for its own sake on an aesthetic level

The youth loves nature as a sacred force, the direct representation of God's love on earth.

The Prelude is a lengthy poem which can be described as a Romantic autobiography. As the subtitle of the poem indicates however, the story is actually about "the growth of a poet's mind" or the subjective life of the author rather than the objective facts and events that would make up his autobiography. Wordsworth thus details his development as a poet and the evolution of his spirit. A crucial subject of the poem is the relationship between nature and the growth of the poet's mind. For Wordsworth, as for the other Romantic poets, there is a complementary relationship between nature and the imagination. This complex and organic relationship is crucial for the understanding of Wordsworth's design in the Prelude. Thus, nature acts permanently on the mind of man, spurring the imagination and growing a spiritual life in the human being. Interestingly, for the Romantic poet, the communion of man with nature is actually what prompts the spiritual ripening of man. It is not through inwardness and reflection on the self that man gains knowledge of himself and of his human feelings, but through the communion with the great spirit of the universe, inscribed in the surrounding nature.

As it will be seen, Wordsworth development as a poet is strictly connected with the various stages of his relationship with nature. During his childhood years, the poet is entranced by nature and the delightful, sensuous experiences it can offer. Nature is thus the force that opens the path towards knowledge and discovery. The author describes various episodes of the child's solitary explorations of nature and of the way in which these experiences contributed to the making of the poet. Not accidentally, the First Book of the Prelude opens with the natural scenes that await the poet in the countryside, the place he returns to after a long and unpleasant stay in London. The breeze that welcomes the poet upon his arrival forms the core of a metaphor that he employs after a few lines. Thus, the breeze that caresses the poet's body and awakens his senses is linked to the breath of inspiration that he suddenly feels within and that spurs his imagination to wander and to create: "For I, methought, while the sweet breath of heaven / Was blowing on my body, felt within / a correspondent breeze, that gently moved / With quickening virtue..."(Wordsworth, 28) the correspondence between nature and the mind of the poet is therefore clearly outlined in these verses. The natural world and the human spirit are intimately related, since nature is actually the spirit of the universe. Through the contemplation of nature and the sensuous experiences offered by nature, the spirit of man is linked to the great spirit of the universe. In the first two books of the Prelude Wordsworth details his growth as a poet and the way in which nature contributed to it from his childhood years. In yet another famous passage of the poem, Wordsworth invokes the river near his house which had blended its murmur with that of the nurse's song: "Was it for this / That one, the fairest of all rivers, loved / to blend his murmurs with my nurse's song, / and, from his alder shades and rocky falls, / and from his fords and shallows, sent a voice / That flowed along my dreams?"(Wordsworth, 42) the flowing waters of the river mix their song with that of the nurse, lulling the child to sleep and populating his dreams. Thus, nature appears as a vital component of the child's early development, blended with the human influence around him. The voice of the river is complementary to that of the nurse and the voice of nature has at this time an almost motherly influence over the child.

The poet populates the first books of the poem with powerful images of his experiences and sensations as a child growing in a natural environment. Episodes like that of the boat trip on a starry night are significant because they allude to the vast influence of nature on the spirit of the child which grows towards understanding and feeling precisely through sensation and contemplation. For Wordsworth therefore, it is the communion with nature which teaches the child to feel and which illuminates the human passions hidden in his soul: "Wisdom and Spirit of the universe! / of childhood didst thou intertwine for me / the passions that build up our human soul; / Not with the mean and vulgar works of man, / but with high objects, with enduring things -- / With life and nature, purifying thus / the elements of feeling and of thought..."(Wordsworth, 48) it is not by studying the works of man and by human companionship that the child learns to love and be wise, but by the communion with the universal spirit which is inspired by nature. The importance of nature to the growth of the mind is thus vital and irreplaceable, as it unveils the very mysteries of life and human existence.

As the child grows older, his experience and love of nature change. The simple charm and spiritual animation that nature had inspired in the early years of childhood are replaced by the pure delight that the poet takes in the contemplation of nature later on. Thus, the young boy becomes captivated by nature "for its own sake," that is, he grows from the mere sensuous delight offered by nature to an aesthetic and philosophical perception of the world surrounding him. Learning to love nature for its own sake is the first step towards the development of a truly poetic mind that can apprehend the greatness and the mystery of nature: "Those incidental charms which first attached / My heart to rural objects day by day / Grew weaker, and I hasten to tell / How nature, intervenient till this time / and secondary, now at length was sought / for her own sake."(Wordsworth, 130) the "incidental charms" that had entranced the senses of the child are now replaced by a higher understanding of nature and an appreciation of its aesthetic power. In this phase, the imagination of the young boy is first moved by the contemplation of nature. The poet is born at the moment when the landscape inspires associations and meditations which are superior to the mere charm the nature had inspired him with earlier in his life. As Ronald Gaskell observes, at this particular stage in his development the poet learns to love man and to feel through loving nature: "The passion of his childhood was nature, and it was love of nature, Wordsworth believed, that led him to love man."(Gaskell, 33) Nature is therefore the force that opens up new horizons of knowledge and feeling, which are vital to the development of the individual.